Sunday, February 6, 2011

What makes a collector?

If you remember a couple of posts ago, I showed you this little vintage nativity scene I have.....and love!

Well, I pondered the idea of checking ebay to see if there was anything like it out there. I guess I must have been bored, who knows. Anyway I did a quick search on ebay and, guess what! I found one. So I popped a quick bid up there. Someone quickly outbid me. Good grief, I thought, this is a 4 inch plastic nativity. AND it's at least 50 years old and made in Hong Kong. So I bid again and put a max bid of about $30.00. Sentimental value you see. I closed down my computer and that was that. A couple days later I received an email that I DID NOT win it!! Whaaaaat? Someone else ended up paying $41.50 for it. I was pissed (and intrigued). So I went back and checked out the bidding on the item. There were two other bidders and ebay will show you what other items people have bid on. Both of them had zillions of bids on Christmas items. Yeesh, collectors! I'm not a collector, I just wanted to get another little plastic nativity like the one that I love so much. The nerve of those........those......'collectors'.......... bidding against my sentimental little quest.

Whoa! Wait a minute! At the bottom of the screen ebay shows other items you might be interested in. And there was another nativity. Oh yeah I thought, I'll show you, you collectors. There goes another bid. And I did a little more searching and discovered that there were plenty more of my precious little nativity scenes. Sooooo, I really don't want to bore you. I just really really wanted to get one. I don't know why the first went for so much but I was nervous so I bid on a few.

Fast forward a couple weeks and guess what?

I think I'm a little bit of a collector. Check this out. I ended up with a few little scenes. (No I did not spend $41 on any of them!) See the three up front? They are 1 and a half to 2 inches tall.

And look at this one! Several different heights in the front for the sheep to stand on. It's about 7 inches tall.

Wowzer!! This is the big daddy of them all. About 8 by 6 inches I think.

That's right people, I bought 8 in all. It appears to be a collection. I lost a few auctions so at one point I got mad and laid down quite a few bids. These things are popular. If you were thinking of making fun of me, then you'd better consider that you just don't know what's cool, lol. I'm looking forward to next Christmas when I can have a little display. And while I wait for next December, I'm staying AWAY from ebay. It doesn't seem to be a good environment for me. I seem to get a little competitive.

Enought of that ok. Here is my sassy and bright mod quilt. I have the basic top done but I'm contemplating an interesting outer border. I decided to give up on my deadline. I really like this quilt and I want to do it justice, with a decent border and nice quilting. That means I need to slow down and not be in a hurry.

When I am in a hurry, I get impatient when it comes to the quilting and that doesn't end well. I get too excited when it gets close to the end and I pick the easiest route. But , fyi, I can actually do a purty decent job when I put the time into it.
So I'll keep you posted as this moves along
Today I played around making some hearts for a Valentine idea. It it turns into something I'll be sure to show you. Enjoy the Super Bowl!